Chapter Two: License Agreement

"Lloyd! Are you okay?" asked a silver-haired boy wearing blue.

"Are you all right? Are you hurt?" This came from a blonde girl wearing the white traveling robes of the priesthood.

Lloyd smiled in relief. The people who came through the door were none other than his traveling companions and friends, Genis and Raine Sage, Collette Brunel, and Kratos…something. The latter responded to Genis' and Collette's respective questions with a curt "He looks fine."

"You guys all came here for me? How did you-"

Botta cut off Lloyd's question with a barking laugh. "Perfect timing! I'll take care of all of you at once!"

Kratos drew his sword. "Get ready."

Botta's oversized falcata proved to be exceptionally quick. Before anyone other than Kratos had drawn their weapons, he managed, in one fluid movement, to unsheathe it and strike the ground at Lloyd's feet, unleashing a burst of mana as he did so. Lloyd's exceptionally swift reflexes barely managed to let him avoid the worst of the ensuing explosion of dust and debris. He was still sent flying, however.

By a stroke of luck, he landed next to Raine, who was able to use healing techniques. "Are you all right? First Aid!" She waved her staff at Lloyd, who felt most of his pain subside in a twinkle of greenish light.

"Thanks, Professor."

Lloyd turned back towards Botta, only to find that he was already on the defensive. Not only did he have to worry about Kratos, who was swiftly dispatching his guards, but he was inches from being completely pummeled by Annabelle. The arms of her robes had altered shape somewhat; they were longer than normal, and ended in two tubes. The left-hand tube had what looked like some sort of really short lance jutting out of it; the other one was hollow and didn't seem to be doing much of anything. At present, Annabelle was forcing Botta into focusing entirely on blocking her lance, preventing him from launching any more attacks. As his brain was processing this, Kratos ran up behind him and unleashed a dashing stab technique known under most schools of swordplay as Sonic Thrust. Before the blow connected, however, Botta performed a kind of spin attack that coincidentally used wind mana, blowing both Kratos and Annabelle back to the walls of the room.

All this took place in a couple of seconds. Rule number one of combat: Fights are very, very fast.

Lloyd drew his swords and ran at Botta while he was coming out of his spin. Botta saw him coming and prepared to block, but his guard was broken by a series of Genis' fireballs coming from…wait, two directions? No time to think about that. Slash, slash, spin attack, Tiger Blade, dodge backwards before Botta can counterattack, run back in and—get blown away by another blast of earth. Somebody clearly isn't paying the base's repair bill.

As Lloyd got up a second time, he heard Annabelle flatly say, "Power Shot." He managed to face Botta just in time to see a rather large fireball? No, fireballs were slower and weren't green. It was apparently close enough, though, because Botta staggered back a few paces and his armor was visibly singed. Before Botta could recover, Lloyd rushed in again and stab, stab, Sonic Thrust, and then used the swordsman's standard ranged technique, Demon Fang, while Botta was picking himself up.

This turned out to be a bad idea, as Botta's weapon suddenly started glowing with an ominous dark aura. "That was unwise of you! Stalagmite!"

Across the room, Genis face displayed a look of pure horror as golden lines appeared below Lloyd and…Why was Collette this close to Botta? Before anything happened, however, someone tackled them from behind, shoving them out of the way of the spell.

Lloyd turned the shove into a diving roll and glanced behind him as he got up. Annabelle was pinned to the ceiling by a massive pillar of rock, but she didn't seem to be in pain at all. She wrenched her right arm free with barely any difficulty and pointed what Lloyd quickly realized was a projectile weapon at him. No, wait, not at him at Botta get out of the line of fire dodge roll

} do1 /mcan/tech/1/power_shot –a weapon

Botta stared briefly at his falcata, which was broken in half, then chuckled. "It seems I have underestimated your abilities. No matter, we have finished what we intended to accomplish. Until we meet again." With that, he dropped the remains of his blade and ran through the door behind him, which was, either by chance or design, the one he had entered.

Raine walked up to the discarded weapon. She had noticed quite a few interesting things about it; it was extremely light for its size, it had demonstrated the ability to channel mana into attacks and what seemed suspiciously similar to an Over Limit state, and there was a gem embedded in the middle of the blade that… "Isn't this an…"

"Professor?" Lloyd had noticed what she was doing and was coming over to investigate.

"Ah, Lloyd. Genis told me what happened. I apologize for the trouble he's caused you."

Lloyd shook his head. "No, I'm the one who dragged Genis into it. I'm sorry."

Before she could ask Lloyd if her hypothesis regarding the gem was correct, Kratos spoke up. "Save the chitchat for later. We shouldn't stay here long."

She found Kratos'…mission-oriented…behavior to be somewhat aggravating, but she suspected it may be deliberate and chose not to display any signs of irritation as a result. It was quite difficult, but she had learned from more difficult subjects than this. "You're right. The escape route should still be open. Let's go."

While the group was leaving the Desian's base, Raine took the time to observe the green-haired girl a bit more closely. Her weapons appeared to be tied somehow to her apparel, which seemed to be some sort of variant on the standard garb of the Church of Martel, due to the fact that when she'd put her weapons away, they had disappeared inside her robes which had promptly shortened to expose her hands. Genis asked the girl, "Hey, what's your name?"

"Unable to comply."

Raine knew perfectly well that Genis' vocabulary was good enough that he knew that choice of words was most definitely normal and not a rude way of refusing to tell him her name at all, whatsoever. "…What?"

"I know, isn't Annabelle's accent weird?" Lloyd said cheerily.

Raine knew perfectly well that Lloyd's vocabulary couldn't win him a spelling bee against second-graders.

Genis slapped his forehead. "Lloyd, her name isn't Annabelle. 'Unable to comply' means 'I can't tell you that.'"

Lloyd was silent for a moment, then asked Annabelle, "So, why can't you tell us your name?"

"Registration incomplete. Value 'system name' has not yet been saved."

More silence, then "…What's that mean, Genis?"

"I…uh…I'm not sure, actually. She keeps using really weird definitions for her words."

Raine was thinking furiously. She remembered reading a pre-War tome on computers that gave definitions for the words "Annabelle" had used that seemed to make her statement coherent, and the fact that some of the more practical sections of the book had made entering the ranch possible in the first place meant that it was more than likely that its information was accurate in this area as well. "I believe she said that she doesn't have a name at the moment. Is that correct?"

"Yes." Raine heard the girl affirm her statement, but didn't see any sort of physical gesture to accompany this, at least none visible from behind. If her current hypothesis was correct, and the girl was in fact some sort of complex machine, this would make sense; according to the text Raine was basing her train of thought on, machines capable of movement generally did not perform any actions that were not absolutely necessary, and physical gestures most likely were not part of that category.

Or she could be overthinking again. She needed to keep reminding herself that people and cooking were quite similar that way.

The group finally left the Desian facility, and ass the desert wind hit her face, Raine realized that she could simply ask the girl whether her hypothesis was correct, and felt rather foolish. "Your speech patterns are quite distinctive. Are you…a machine of some sort?"

The girl remained silent for a moment, then replied, "I can't tell you that." Raine thought it was rather impressive how the girl could sound almost exactly the same as her younger brother.

"Hey! Don't make fun of me! Lloyd, why are you snickering‽"

Lloyd struggled to compose himself. "I'm sorry, she's just really good at mimicking you. Anyway, you said she wants a name, right? How about Gauss?"

Collette joined the conversation with "Gauss? Where's that from?"

"It's the name of a person from an old dwarven legend. I always thought it sounded kind of cool."

Kratos continued his apparent tradition of joining conversations as briefly as possible with, "I am vaguely familiar with the legend in question, and I don't see any reason to oppose the name, much as I disagree with giving out names on the basis of entertainment."

Raine herself had read about the legend some time back from a book Dirk, Lloyd's adoptive father, had lent her. The legend in question was a children's tale about a dwarf that, after various hardships, managed to invent the first axe. The name 'Gauss' in that tale belonged to a squirrel, of all things. The squirrel in question, however, was supposedly a sort of dwarven god, and there was someone in Aselia whose name in the common tongue was, roughly, "Rinser of Winds," so she supposed Lloyd could have had a worse idea. "Well, I can't say I see anything wrong with calling you Gauss either. Do you agree with this?"

"…Understood. Please refer to me as Gauss from now on. Lloyd, what are my objectives?"

"Objective? Hang on, I know this one…Objectives are like goals, right?"

Raine sighed. "More or less. She wants to know what our mission is."

"Oh, we're on the journey of regeneration. Collette here is the Chosen of Mana."

"Understood. Primary objective set to default. Secondary objective set to protection of the Chosen. Is this acceptable?"

"Uh…sure." Lloyd seemed to be getting the general idea of what Gauss was saying at this point.

"Understood. Registration is now complete."

"Er…Professor?"

Raine sighed again. While it was true that ancient machine definitions weren't necessary in most people's vocabulary, Lloyd clearly wasn't most people, and therefore obviously needed more vocabulary tutoring. "She means she doesn't have any more questions for now."

"Ah…right. Got it."

After a moment, Kratos said in a clipped tone, "If we're done, can we pick up the pace? I'd like to be back in Triet before nightfall."

{A/N 2011.03.14} Goddomot, I only realized just now as I was writing this that Gauss is effectively Zero at this point because of her weapons and also another thing that's going to come up later on. This was VERY not intentional, at least not consciously. I just wanted her to have both a close-range and a long-range weapon. And the other thing as well. If it helps, she's got a crew cut and not a ridiculous ponytail, and those are DEFINITELY the only two weapons she will ever use, so no Shieldmerang or Triple Rod3. This being the Tales series, however, upgraded versions of her starting equipment are fair game and probably will end up being necessary.

Of course, now that I'm aware Gauss is Sylvarant's Zero, I'm going to be having some fun later on with OH THIS IS A FANFICTION JUST GUESS.

This is my first fight scene longer than half a page, and I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me how to do them better if you know how in a review. I'm pretty sure I could've done better on it, but I'm not sure how, exactly.

Oh, and just so you all know, Gauss' sense of humor doesn't exist. Anything amusing she does is entirely incidental on her part.